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Just finished an Earth-type map with 12 NPCs, King difficulty. At least 20 hours (not all at once, obviously). Was randomly selected Oda Nobunaga (hell yes!) and conveniently placed where reality South Africa is.

Many legendary RL hours and in-game millennium later, the Japanese conquered Earth.

My only complaint is the major lag at 200+ turns with many NPCs. The lag is two-fold: the natural turn time for NPCs can be long, but expected. Then there's the temporary client freezing as my turn becomes active, when the game processes all the upcoming events for me (and proceeds to spam my screen with notifications). I run a pretty beefy system too; i7 Quad 3.6Ghz, 6Gb DDR3 (could use more), GTX 480. Visually the game is amazing, I'm probably playing at a smooth 60 FPS+. The music is fantastic.

One tip.. turn on "Quick Combat" for subsequent large games. The animations are impressive, but after 200+ turns you tire of them and crave for faster combat. :P I wish there were a setting to only show new animations, meaning once you've seen an animation for the first time in a game it wont show it again. (that way you can see animations for new units).

Edit:
Another tip, probably a newbie one (I haven't played a Civlization game since III so that includes me).. make your "Turns Between Autosave" set to 1! The default 10 is too long for huge maps and many NPCs. My game crashed at one point, and those 10 turns was more than an hour worth. =( (I was engaged in war with some 6 different civilizations at once so turns were incredibly long)

Seems kind of like a late beta build to me. I've encountered some bugs, the loading isn't optimized, and there are some really weird design things like Rifling not being required to make Infantry, so you can skip riflemen completely and make un-rifled tanks and such, which makes no sense at all. It's a good game, but could've used another month of polish to make it an awesome game.

By what I read, the biggest problem is the poor AI. Since you no longer can simply create an infinite stack of units, the battles are more tactical (which is great) and that's something the devs failed to take into account. Unless they meant Civ5 to be played online? Does it support multiplayer on Steam?

By what I read, the biggest problem is the poor AI. Since you no longer can simply create an infinite stack of units, the battles are more tactical (which is great) and that's something the devs failed to take into account. Unless they meant Civ5 to be played online? Does it support multiplayer on Steam?

Oh yeah played a few epic games with some friends on steam a few nights ago. Of course I also have some issues with the AI. Combat is great now, but the AI is so damn aggressive. You are almost forced to go for a military victory. Well that or nearly destroying every civ and then asking them to vote in the UN .

The load times do get pretty extreme near the end. Of course with massive empires it takes more calculating for the AI to make it's calls.

That's very disappointing, since I was hoping for more depth. I suppose all those diplomacy/espionage/whatnot -features are just eye-candy yet again. Not that much of a problem if the online play works well, but the single-player mode definitely suffers.

Speaking of online play, how does it work? I can't see how I could just pick up the game, hop online for a few hours, and then continue at a convinient time.

I just saw today that road and railroads cost money to keep! Crap! Why? I had to freaking reduce them to the minimal possible else they eat my income. What even sux more is the part where you put the city to generate money instead of building something. 10% of tools turns into money is almost nothing at all!!!

My only complaint is the major lag at 200+ turns with many NPCs. The lag is two-fold: the natural turn time for NPCs can be long, but expected. Then there's the temporary client freezing as my turn becomes active, when the game processes all the upcoming events for me (and proceeds to spam my screen with notifications). I run a pretty beefy system too; i7 Quad 3.6Ghz, 6Gb DDR3 (could use more), GTX 480. Visually the game is amazing, I'm probably playing at a smooth 60 FPS+. The music is fantastic.

One tip.. turn on "Quick Combat" for subsequent large games. The animations are impressive, but after 200+ turns you tire of them and crave for faster combat. :P I wish there were a setting to only show new animations, meaning once you've seen an animation for the first time in a game it wont show it again. (that way you can see animations for new units).

Edit:
Another tip, probably a newbie one (I haven't played a Civlization game since III so that includes me).. make your "Turns Between Autosave" set to 1! The default 10 is too long for huge maps and many NPCs. My game crashed at one point, and those 10 turns was more than an hour worth. =( (I was engaged in war with some 6 different civilizations at once so turns were incredibly long)

Holy crap, and you lag? I have no hope then. I'm running 2.8 ghz and my graphics card is rather lacking.

That's very disappointing, since I was hoping for more depth. I suppose all those diplomacy/espionage/whatnot -features are just eye-candy yet again. Not that much of a problem if the online play works well, but the single-player mode definitely suffers.

Speaking of online play, how does it work? I can't see how I could just pick up the game, hop online for a few hours, and then continue at a convinient time.

Yeah with single player I'm just going in for a huge world war kind of thing. With friends can try to play it more with the other options. Although when I tried for the space race it did turn into a world war .

Have only played with some steam friends so multiplayer experience is limited to that. In terms of online play the game auto saves somewhere like every 5 turns or so. Can always continue later from that save. Negative is that you can't seem to manually save the games and it will only autosave one game. If you start another with some different friends the game will actually save over the previous one. It doesn't have to be all in one sitting, but better finish with that first group of friends before you start a different one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tiberium Wolf

Diplomacy is the same as ever... it sux!

I just saw today that road and railroads cost money to keep! Crap! Why? I had to freaking reduce them to the minimal possible else they eat my income. What even sux more is the part where you put the city to generate money instead of building something. 10% of tools turns into money is almost nothing at all!!!

The game is freaking slow in e6600.

I still think civ2 is better.

Well to be fair it does kind of make sense for roads to have some upkeep cost. I mean they do have to repave them every few centuries or else they'd be useless . They don't cost that much, but never hurts to avoid laying a lot of useless roads.

Yeah setting your cities to building research or money is completely useless. They don't generate nearly enough to be worth it. The most they do is make it so you aren't building something that requires upkeep.

Aww, the only thread about Civ is about V.... well that was sorta disappointing. Well, I got the opportunity to try it again thanks to a friend.

I think the thing that really turned me off is the UI; I mean why does fortify button appear in a submenu? Oh sure, I could just hit F, but still. The menu design is just generally a clusterfuck, and not nearly as clean as IV was.

But at least the unit finder is superior...

Anyhow, enough bitching... a few fun notes about the game before I go back to IV, for those that are still struggling. Of course, I only tried out Prince difficulty. But hey, I still managed to eventually win even though I didn't know the tech tree.

-- Diplomatic victory is awfully abusive. In reality, all you need to win is to build the UN, and save up enough gold to buy as much city states as you need to win. (Check the victory conditions). It's unfortunate that the UN doesn't do anything else, but it's a nice escape route if you are losing. You could win a UN victory even if all your cities were being conquered save for the UN city.

-- In order to save up lots of gold, delete obsolete units. Deleting a warrior on 1 occasion saved me 5 gold per turn (wtf?). If you need money to buy city states for a diplo victory, delete more units, including your workers!

-- City states are just great in general; not only do they give resources sometimes, but they are good allies, arguably better than the other civs. I've seen a city state beat the crap out of an enemy civ I was at war at and raze a city before I could do anything. If you can get all the ones closest to you, you are effectively protected, and can skimp on units. The AI is a tard and will take forever to kill even one city state, and can easily survive with your help. Late game they get a bit weak, but it's early on that you need help with anyways.

Oh sure, they taunted my pitiful army of 2 archers, 1 crossbow, and 2 warriors in 1500 AD. But hey, I have bought out 4-5 city states; no one dared to attack. End game? A couple of infantry, some anti-tanks and a few artillery; most were donations from the city states...I almost have more city state friends then army. Yep, nobody wanted to piss them all off.

If a rival AI is upset that you're influencing too much, tell them to gtfo.

--Another excellent way to woo city states is to get a great merchant, whose trade missions give you gold and city state points. Some wonders let you get a great merchant. You can also generate great people points by running merchant citizens (you need a bank or market to make this happen-- in the city management screen there are specialist slots that can be filled to the right. But be careful-- for every merchant specialist that's working, there's someone not working food or production tiles, so only do this for cities that have a food surplus.) Once you've generated enough points from merchant specialists, you'll get a great merchant. Hint: Do not waste these guys on a golden age.

--If a city state asks for a resource, and you don't have it-- you can trade for that resource with another civ; you will still be able to make the city state happy and increase your influence.

-- Denouncement. The AIs like to denounce you and each other if you declare war a lot. Killing a city state is a big no-no since it causes like everyone to hate you immediately. Besides, they're more useful to you alive than dead. If a bunch of rival civs denounce a civ, follow in too; you will gain their approval and isolate the last civ.

-- Research agreements are great things. Typically you would do it with a civ that is behind you, as the more advanced you are, the more expensive technology you can come across. Hell, sometimes I'd donate money just so I can get these going. I was thinking a quick tech to rifles would help, but I was already at infantry after only 2 rifles since the RA's helped so much.

-- To further boost your research, you can try scientist specialists to increase the chance of a great scientist appearing.

-- Do not announce you are BFFs with everyone. When you make the BFF announcement, your "friends" expect you to help them out in war. If you refuse, then you're not a leader of their word and that means they'll denounce you. Thus, think twice before you do these things. I wouldn't do them until you are sure with the landscape.

-- Do not build too many buildings in every cities, especially the small ones that are still growing. Those buildings now cost money! Even though building wealth is pathetic, it's still better than building something that costs you. If you can't build wealth or research, you should try building walls; for some reason they cost 0 maintenance.

-- You can only use one copy of a luxury resource. If you have 3 sources of whale it does you no better than to have 1 source of whale save for the extra tile yield. Thus, you should always try selling your surplus resources to the highest bidder.

--Strategic resources, on the other hand needs to be stacked, otherwise you can't support units. Hoard them up, and rarely trade them. Well, maybe your horses after you get infantry and tanks...

-- Settle cities near a source of food. You'll save yourself less headaches wondering why that city never grows beyond 2 population.

-- Trading posts! There's no point in growing a overpopulated, unhappy, and poor empire. I usually spam them unless there's not enough food to grow the city. And speaking of building improvements, improve grassland first because it gives more food. I will chop down grassland forests but keep forests on any other terrain. Deforested tundra and plains tiles really, really suck. Unless it's a hill, which you should use to get more hammers with a mine.

--However, once you get that technology that gives you 2 food farms and manage to secure a lot of luxury resources, you can focus on getting more farms to grow your pop and work mines, which will allow production to happen much faster.

--Lighthouses-- Mandatory for any coastal city. Unless it has seafood in it, sea tiles only give you 1 food, which really sucks. In general, if a water tile doesn't have seafood, it probably sucks and avoid having these tiles in your city

-- Even with temples and monuments, the culture takes forever to pop, just buy the damned tile if it's good.

-- In border zones and contested territory, do chop down forests. The last thing you want to do is give invading armies large defensive bonuses. Also, garrisoning cities tends to be a waste; as the city itself tends to have strong defenses. You're better off using your units to drive the enemy away.

-- Air units are powerful because they can be concentrated; use this to blast enemies into submission

-- Because roads are so fucking expensive, build your cities tighter. If you think you can put 2 cities there, you can probably fit 3. Let cities connect each other.

-- The majority of wonders are crap; spend your hammers elsewhere. Great artists and any of the "great person improvements" blow pretty hard as well. If possible the great person you want to burn up for a golden age is an artist.

-- My favorite: Don't like someone? Pay someone else to take care of them. There will be a lot of denouncing and attacking going on, but hey, at least it's not you. In fact, if you're about to win, it's frequently a good idea to get everyone else into a war.

I purchased the game and then I realized that there was no hot-seat mode.

I don't understand. I didn't even bother to check and make sure that it was an option because Civ without hot seat mode is like Russia without vodka. According to the company it was not a very popular option, but I read many a post of people asking that they bring it back. It just doesn't make sense to remove game-modes like this.